Donald Trump dismissed data analytics during the Republican primary — and he dominated anyway.But on Friday, a group of top Republican campaign operatives gathered in Washington to talk about why analytics still matter for the GOP in the Trump era, especially for a party that’s historically lagged in adopting a data-first mindset but has worked aggressively to change course.“He is a candidate who was able to speak to voters in a way above all of the stuff we’d normally do,” said Mike Shields, the former chief of staff of the Republican National Committee, as he also praised the Trump campaign’s utilization of the RNC data operation. “It doesn’t mean it’s not valid for a lot of the other campaigns we work on, unless you have a candidate like Donald Trump.”The conference at the Microsoft Innovation and Policy Center in downtown Washington was attended by Shields, who is starting his own data-driven firm, Convergence Media; Brian Baker, the president of Ending Spending Action Fund; Danny Diaz, who served as Jeb Bush’s campaign manager; Liesl Hickey, a veteran Republican operative; and Corry Bliss, Rob Portman’s successful campaign manager. The discussion was moderated by Alex Lundry of Deep Root Analytics, who headed Bush’s and Mitt Romney’s analytics operations. Their panel, covered exclusively by POLITICO, was part of a daylong Republican analytics conference aimed at bringing together GOP data whizzes, a growing group in a party that was slower to prioritize data and analytics than its Democratic counterpart. The event drew about 140 people, Lundry said, and there was an overflow room as operatives traded best practices and discussed lessons learned from the 2016 race.In the session POLITICO attended, the campaign hands all stressed that GOP strategists — and in particular, Republican donors — now understand and deeply value the role that data analytics plays on winning campaigns.“In the last couple years, you guys have gone from the weird kids no one would hang out with, to the cool guys who get all the girls,” Bliss said to laughs, as he delved into the Portman campaign’s extensive micro-targeting efforts. “There’s been a total shift in everything.”The Trump campaign came to realize the importance of analytics, too, the panelists said, even if they took an unconventional approach to the subject, especially early on.“They did use analytics: It was their metric that was different from the metric that folks in the other campaigns were using,” Baker said of Trump’s approach in the primary. “His metric, which proved to be absolutely 100 percent right, was the size of the crowds. When he would say, ‘I have 10,000, 30,000 people in Mobile, Ala. in August,’ that’s incredible. Other people were getting 20 people in Iowa. That’s a form of analytics: He knew who his crowd size was, he knew who the voters were, they turned them out. They may not have used some of the modern techniques we’ve been discussing here, but it was analytics and he did win.”Shields, who played a key role in getting the RNC to focus more on ground-game investment, noted that the Trump campaign did plug into the party committee’s data and field efforts during the general election — something he credited when discussing Trump’s win — and added that members of the Trump inner circle are on board when it comes to valuing data now. He pointed in particular to Brad Parscale, Trump’s digital director.“Because he was performing, he wound up being at the heart of the campaign, making really important decisions day-to-day about how everything ran,” he said. “That’s really really hopeful for our party. It’s also hopeful that he’s working to bring the RNC data, the data trust data … all together. We have work to do to keep doing that, but it’s hopeful that we’ve built a foundation that performed and it won.”Several of the panelists acknowledged that data doesn’t correct for everything. Trump’s populist message struck a chord in the GOP primary that no amount of data or money could overcome — and it worked again in the general election against Hillary Clinton’s data-obsessed, deeply organized campaign. “Message is still king in campaigns,” said Diaz, whose candidate, Bush, lost early on to Trump, despite significant investment in analytics. Hickey added that Trump also benefited from the “billions of earned media he was getting because there were 30,000 at a rally in Mobile, Ala. That’s something that drove his campaign along with his message in a way a lot of us have not seen in previous campaigns.” But for most candidates, more traditional blocking and tackling is aided immensely by extensive data operations, and several of the panelists said that in their campaigns and organizations this cycle, they prioritized keeping the data team in the loop, and stressed the importance of having analytics operatives involved at the most senior levels.That level of emphasis on data at the presidential level was a new development in Republican politics this year, Lundry said in an interview ahead of the event—and there were some kinks to be worked out.“As I started putting together [the Bush] operation, I realized, I’m dealing with questions of, how do we … flow data information up to senior staff? All of these fundamental questions were baked into this that hadn’t been answered because it was really one of the first cycles [Republican presidential candidates] had fully integrated data analytics into the campaign operation,” Lundry said. Of course, it didn’t ultimately work for the Bush campaign, he acknowledged. And the Friday before the election, the RNC’s sophisticated models still did not show a Trump win either. But Lundry pointed to major RNC investments in data, and Trump’s ultimate victory, as evidence that the GOP has taken seriously its past shortcomings in analytics — which were laid bare in the contests against the Obama campaign -- and other, more traditional Republican candidates, like Portman, did the same.“I don’t take the message away that analytics doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “If anything, it shows its importance.”

On December 1, the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump presidential campaign staffs met in a forum at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government to review and analyze the results of this year’s presidential election. This forum which has been held at Harvard after every presidential election since 1972 is usually quite collegial in nature.
This year it was any thing but as Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton campaign communications director, and Kellyanne Conway, Trump campaign manager, engaged in a “shouting match”.
Palmieri precipitated the combative confrontation by accusing the Trump campaign of “providing a platform for white supremacists.” She continued to state, “I would rather lose than win the way you guys did.”
After that, Conway disputed Palmieri’s accusations in a testy exchange - near the end of which Palmieri clarified, “I’m not saying that’s how you won but that’s the campaign that was run, yes.” Conway countered, “We flipped over 200 counties that President Obama won…” adding, “How about you had no economic message.”
Even though Palmieri and Conway disagreed they both made some valid points during their disputation. The Trump campaign did not win because of building a “platform for white supremacists” and the Clinton campaign lost, in part, because of not being able to prevail in “counties that President Obama won.”
There are many reasons that Trump won the Electoral College vote by a relatively narrow margin and that Clinton lost in spite of winning the popular vote by more than 2.5 million votes. At this point in time - too close to the heat of certainly the most contentious campaign in our life times - possibly those least able to engage in an objective and detached assessment in order to identify the underlying or root causes for the outcome are the staff closest to and most responsible for the conduct of the campaign for each candidate.
Over the next few years and perhaps decades, there will undoubtedly be detailed academic studies and books written on what transpired in the confusing and confounding presidential election year of 2016. Here is our quick take and initial analysis on the cards that were played – or not – that gave the victory to President-elect Trump. In this year’s presidential contest:
Antipathy trumped anger
The back roads trumped the beltways
The outsiders trumped the insiders
The message trumped the material
The media trumped itself
Fake news trumped “real” news
Chaos trumped order
Antipathy Trumped Anger
In our opinion, the single biggest determinant for the way this election turned out was the lack of turnout. Only approximately 55+% of the eligible voters cast ballots. This was the lowest turnout since the Bush-Gore contest in 2000 (turnout = 56.6%). According to CNN, the turnout in 2012, 2008 and 2004 was 60.0%, 63.7%, and 62.2% respectively.
Pew research conducted prior to the election showed that many of the voters who planned on coming to the polls were angry. In the past, those who stayed away might have been labeled alienated or estranged from the political or governmental process. Those who didn’t vote this time went beyond alienation to antipathy – a complete aversion and dislike for things political.
What is even more disturbing than the low turnout is that it appears that there were a number of voters who voted on Election Day but did not cast a vote for president.
It is not unusual for there to be a “fall-off” in down ballot races. It is unheard of at the top of the ticket. Combine this phenomenon with the non-voters and antipathy ruled the day in the presidential election in 2016. If there had been anywhere near a normal turnout, there most probably would have been a different outcome.
The Back Roads Trumped the Beltways
One of the frequent media comments after the election was that Clinton won in the coastal states and that Trump carried the day in the interior of the country. While this observation is true in general, it misses the real point.
The truth is that the Republicans tended to control in rural areas in red and blue states across the entire country and the Democrats tended to control in the more urban areas and college towns. For example, in the blue state of Illinois which has 102 counties, 91 counties went for Trump and a mere 11 went for Clinton.
One of the keys to the Trump victory is that the rural areas turned out big time in the rust belt states such as Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania – the urban areas not so much so. Reince Priebus, the RNC party chair, helped put together the strategy and tactical action plans that brought these folks from the back roads and blue highways out in sufficient numbers to trump the folks from the beltways and Clinton and the Democrats in this election.
The Outsiders Trumped the Insiders
Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sander’s surprising performances during the Republican and Democratic primaries demonstrated that 2016 was going to be an unusual election year. Their populist appeal – although to different constituencies – in the primaries set the stage for the outsiders to vanquish the insiders.
It is ironic that Trump - an insider if there ever was one - through a feat of legerdemain was able to channel and claim the mantle of the outsider and change master. Nonetheless, he did so and attracted a broad swath of voters who were fed-up with business and politics as usual.
It is instructive to note that even though Sanders aligned himself closely with Clinton after she won the Democratic nomination and the Democratic Party platform was made much more progressive in response to Sander’s popularity that did little to sway a fairly large percentage of his supporters. In surveys before Election Day, 15% of Sanders supporters said they would support Trump and as many as one-third said they would not vote for Clinton.
The message from those Sanders’ backers was clear. They saw Clinton as the ultimate insider and even though she might have been a change agent at one point in her career, the establishment and elitist baggage she collected later in her career prevented them from embracing her candidacy.
The Message Trumped the Material
The Clinton campaign was long on plans but short on sound bites. The Trump campaign was just the opposite.
In 2016, as in most presidential election years, the stronger message and the stronger messenger won the day. Make America Great Again may not have been as compelling as Change You Can Believe In. But, it was definitely more aspirational and inspirational than I’m with Her or Stronger Together.
In the election post-mortems, numerous analysts attributed part of the Clinton campaign loss to the failure to establish a convincing, compelling and consistent message box that cut across voter groups. The focus on kids and families was important but did not resonate with the multitude of voters whose principal concerns were economic uncertainty and future security.
The Media Trumped Itself
Early on in his efforts to gain the presidency, most of the media did not take Trump’s candidacy seriously but they gave him an incredible amount of uncritical air and print time. He was the beneficiary of a free pass.
Recently, aides to Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio accused CNN of helping Trump to win the primaries through “biased coverage” because of the attention it devoted to covering him and his pronouncements. (This is an interesting perspective in that later in his campaign for President Trump singled out CNN as being unfair in its coverage of him.)
By the time the mainstream media began to be more critical and analytical in covering Trump’s campaign to win the Republican nomination and then the presidency of the United States, it was too little too late. Trump had gained center stage and he was not going to be upstaged.
He used his position in the bully pulpit of his own and the media’s making to continue to dominate news cycles. He used his rallies to denigrate and discredit the media and to make the fourth estate the enemy of the people – at least in the minds of his supporters
Combine this with the media’s insatiable appetite and unending coverage of Clinton’s e-mail problems, the wiki-leaks disclosures, substantial reporting on the findings of some public opinion polls that were highly suspect in terms of their design and the reliability and validity of findings, add in opinion pieces and editorials against Trump, and it becomes apparent how the media trumped itself with a large segment of the voting public. In spite of frequently outlandish and incredulous statements, Trump became the victim instead of the victimizer.
Fake News Trumped “Real” News
Much has been written about how fake news through social media and alt-right outlets, helped feed the Trump candidacy with various constituencies. But, the primary source of fake news during the primaries and the race for the presidency was not these outlets but the Trump tweet machine.
Trump in a stroke of brilliance made his tweets his means of communicating with his supporters during the campaign and continues to do so as President-elect.
Forget the alt-right. Trump is the alt-media. Depending on whose numbers one is looking at Trump currently has somewhere between 12 million to 16+million Twitter followers. And, they consider his comments the “truth” even when there is absolutely no shred of evidence to support them
As one example of Trump’s reach, shortly after it became apparent that he would take a drubbing from Hillary Clinton in the popular vote count, even though Trump had won the Electoral College vote, he sent out a tweet with the absurd assertion that he had actually won the popular vote as well but that millions of illegal votes were cast in the blue states thus giving Clinton the popular vote. The mainstream media reported this fake news as “real news” – although its veracity was called to question by some.
Chaos Trumped Order
During the presidential race, the press frequently reported on the efficiency and effectiveness of the Clinton campaign in contrast to the disorganized and frequently reorganized Trump campaign. The underlying assumption was probably that order would produce a win and that disorder would produce a loss.
As we all know, that’s not what happened and not what was predicted. What happened did not seem possible. It did not seem logical. It did not seem rational. In fact, for many it seemed unbelievable Nevertheless, it occurred.
That’s because politics and the election process takes place in a chaotic rather than a deterministic system – a system in which small changes and variances can change the trajectory or the outcome of things.
In chaos theory, working with mathematical models, rounding off of variables can dramatically change predictions on things such as weather conditions. Like the weather, the political process takes place in a dynamic rather than a static system.
Feelings can influence behavior as much and many times more-so than facts. Facts can speak for themselves but they frequently speak to themselves. Feelings, on the other hand, can be amplified, magnified and intensified through the use of facts and/or fictions.
In this election cycle, a master manipulator amplified, magnified and intensified the feelings of an ignored segment of the voting populous thus creating chaos. That chaos was sufficient to trump order in the places where it mattered. It blew holes in the Democrat’s blue wall and enabled carrying the essential battleground states.
As we said at the outset of this blog, this is our analysis of the reasons that are top of mind for us as the trump cards in this election. There are areas that we have not discussed such as: the impact of FBI Director Comey’s statements; the low turnout of people of color for Clinton as opposed to Obama; why some people of color supported Trump; why Clinton lost the vote of white working class women; and, why white college-educated males went for Trump. In addition to the points we have enumerated, all of these factors played some role in the final electoral results. We are confident other commentators will address their significance in their analyses.
In conclusion, the major lessons we take away based upon our analysis are:
Polls do not vote people do
America does have a “rigged” political system that needs to be fixed (See our blog on this posted shortly after the November 8 election.)
Our American democracy is at risk and needs to be revitalized (See our next blog for our thoughts on this.)
Near the end of the constitutional convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked, “Well Doctor – what have we got a republic or a monarchy? Franklin replied, “A republic – if you can keep it.”
We have kept that republic now for nearly 230 years since Franklin’s observation. As we move into 2017, we need to come together to do the work that will be required to keep our America a republic for another 230 years.
We need to do this not as Republicans or supporters of Donald Trump nor as Democrats or as supporters of Hillary Clinton but as concerned citizens who are committed to moving America forward rather than backward.
We’ve got a new deck of cards and will be dealt new hands to play. They may not be the cards or hands that many of us expected or wanted. But, by staying involved and in the game, we can determine America’s trump cards for the future. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Listen to Playbook in 90 Seconds http://bit.ly/2h9Ebz1 … Subscribe on iTunes http://apple.co/2eX6EayBULLETIN at 5:28 a.m. -- “TOKYO (AP) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says he will visit Pearl Harbor with President Barack Obama in late December.”GOOD MONDAY MORNING. 46 days until Donald Trump is sworn in as president of the United States.IT’S OFFICIAL -- From the Trump transition team this morning: “President-elect Donald J. Trump today announced his intent to nominate Dr. Ben Carson to serve as Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Dr. Carson is a distinguished national leader who overcame his troubled youth in the inner city of Detroit to become a renowned neurosurgeon who served as the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland ...“Ben Carson has a brilliant mind and is passionate about strengthening communities and families within those communities. We have talked at length about my urban renewal agenda and our message of economic revival, very much including our inner cities. Ben shares my optimism about the future of our country and is part of ensuring that this is a Presidency representing all Americans. He is a tough competitor and never gives up.”**SUBSCRIBE to Playbook: http://politi.co/1M75UbXCOMING ATTRACTIONS: THE DEBT CEILING -- Republicans on Capitol Hill are already beginning to fret over how they’ll lift the debt ceiling in the age of Donald Trump. Here’s how top Republicans are thinking of things. In the past, fiscal conservatives have insisted on cutting spending to match any increase of the debt ceiling . If they hold fast on that this time around, they’ll have to go after entitlements -- which Trump has been cool to. GOP leadership will spend much of the first part of 2017 passing an infrastructure bill, working on tax reform and repealing the health care law -- and that will take a lot of political capital. There has been some discussion about lifting the debt ceiling -- which has to be done by late summer -- as part of a larger deal, but there are mixed feelings about going down that path. Rank-and-file Republicans have relished fights over the debt ceiling, so with the White House in GOP hands, they might not be so eager to get in line. That Republicans are already thinking -- and strategizing -- about this shows how big of a deal it will be.TRANSITION WATCH -- “Trump revels in the secretary of state show,” by Shane Goldmacher and Alex Isenstadt: “President-elect Donald Trump is no closer to choosing his secretary of state, but he is making the most of auditions — as suitors sell themselves on television and in private Trump Tower sessions — that have become the kind of public spectacle that Trump relishes. After initially narrowing his list to four finalists, Trump expanded it anew over the weekend, with interview invitations given to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson and retired Navy Admiral James G. Stavridis for this week … Trump already has a relationship with Tillerson, according to two sources involved in the transition, and he appeals to the president-elect because he’s ‘somebody who already deals on the world stage,’ one source said. But despite being CEO of one of the world’s largest corporations, Tillerson has undergone little to no vetting in advance of meeting with Trump … “Stavridis, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, is intriguing in part because he was vetted by Hillary Clinton as a potential running mate -- and because he, like Romney, has been sharply critical of Trump. Meanwhile, Romney’s longtime nemesis, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, has told people that he badly wanted to be in the mix for secretary of state. Huntsman, who also served as President Barack Obama’s ambassador to China, didn’t respond on Sunday to questions about his interest in the job. One senior Trump transition official floated an unlikelier secretary of state pick on Sunday: Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who has been publicly been linked previously to the administration as a potential energy secretary.” http://politi.co/2gT1FFm--Seth Masket (@smotus): “So if Romney criticizes Trump’s behavior now, it looks like sour grapes over a lost Secy of State bid. Well played, Donald.”-- NEWS YOU CAN USE: “The Plum Book is here, for those angling for jobs in Trump’s Washington,” by WaPo’s Lisa Rein: “The biggest Help Wanted ad in eight years will materialize in Washington first thing Monday: A plum-colored paperback listing 9,000 political jobs that will be available for those who want to work in Donald Trump’s administration. The 226-page Plum Book — so called for the desirable jobs that change hands at the end of a presidential term — lists every patronage position in the executive and legislative branches that could be filled by Trump supporters. ... The publication’s 10 a.m. release Monday in hard copy at the Government Publishing Office bookstore at 710 N. Capitol St. NW and digitally at www.govinfo.gov (plus through the Plum Book App) also will mark a shift in the newly elected administration’s center of gravity to Washington from Midtown Manhattan. ... As of Friday, 65,800 men and women had applied to serve in the Trump administration through the website GreatAgain.gov.” http://wapo.st/2h3mmxv BEHIND THE SCENES -- “Trump’s Taiwan phone call was long planned, say people who were involved,” by WaPo’s Anne Gearan, Philip Rucker and Simon Denyer: “Donald Trump’s protocol-breaking telephone call with Taiwan’s leader was an intentionally provocative move that establishes the incoming president as a break with the past, according to interviews with people involved in the planning. The historic communication — the first between leaders of the United States and Taiwan since 1979 — was the product of months of quiet preparations and deliberations among Trump’s advisers about a new strategy for engagement with Taiwan that began even before he became the Republican presidential nominee ... The call also reflects the views of hard-line advisers urging Trump to take a tough opening line with China, said others familiar with the months of discussion about Taiwan and China.” http://wapo.st/2gRUXiF -- TRUMP INC.: NYT A13, “Taiwan City Planning a Makeover Says a Trump Agent Showed Interest,” by Mike Forsythe: “Described as the biggest development project in Taiwan’s history, the multibillion-dollar Taoyuan Aerotropolis promises, in a video with a saccharine violin and harp soundtrack, a futuristic utopia of eco-friendly homes and thousands of technology jobs. Investors are welcome, and on Sept. 8, one arrived, a Taiwanese-American woman named Chen Siting, or Charlyne Chen. She claimed to represent a very prominent businessman: Donald J. Trump. … ‘I told them: Isn’t Mr. Trump campaigning for president? Isn’t he very busy?’ the mayor, Cheng Wen-tsan, said in a television interview that aired on Nov. 18, referring to Ms. Chen’s group. ‘They said she is a company representative. His company is still continuing to look for the world’s best real estate projects, and they very much understand Taiwan.’” http://nyti.ms/2gEsLCe … That Taiwan project promotional video http://bit.ly/2g1WfpZ TRUMP ON CHINA -- @realDonaldTrump early Sunday night: “Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into … their country (the U.S. doesn’t tax them) or to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea? I don’t think so!”--FACT-CHECK -- WaPo: “The United States does impose a tax on Chinese goods — 2.9 percent for non-farm goods and 2.5 percent for agricultural products.” http://wapo.st/2gRUXiF -- @Ed_Miliband: “Trump railing against China on Twitter like it is a Celebrity Apprentice feud is not funny, but deeply, deeply worrying for the world.”FAKE NEWS UPDATE -- “N.C. man told police he went to D.C. pizzeria with assault rifle to ‘self-investigate’ election-related conspiracy theory,” by WaPo’s Faiz Siddiqui and Susan Svrluga: “The man told police he had come to the restaurant to ‘self-investigate’ a false election-related conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton that spread online during her presidential campaign. The incident caused panic, with several businesses going into lockdown as police swarmed the neighborhood after receiving the call shortly before 3 p.m. Police said 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch, of Salisbury, N.C., walked in the front door of Comet Ping Pong and pointed a firearm in the direction of a restaurant employee. The employee was able to flee and notify police. Police said Welch proceeded to discharge the rifle inside the restaurant; they think that all other occupants had fled when Welch began shooting. Welch has been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon. Police said there were no reported injuries.” http://wapo.st/2gT3EJF-- STATEMENT FROM COMET OWNER JAMES ALEFANTIS: “There will be a time and place to address how and why this happened in greater detail. For now, I will simply say that we should all condemn the efforts of certain people to spread malicious and utterly false accusations about Comet Ping Pong, a venerated DC institution. Let me state unequivocally: these stories are completely and entirely false, and there is no basis in fact to any of them. What happened today demonstrates that promoting false and reckless conspiracy theories comes with consequences. I hope that those involved in fanning these flames will take a moment to contemplate what happened here today, and stop promoting these falsehoods right away.”-- “How The Bizarre Conspiracy Theory Behind ‘Pizzagate’ Was Spread,” by BuzzFeed’s Craig Silverman. http://bzfd.it/2gaFGeG -- “Incoming national security adviser’s son spreads fake news about D.C. pizza shop,” by POLITICO: “On Sunday, Flynn’s son, Michael Flynn Jr., tweeted, ‘Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it’ll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many ‘coincidences’ tied to it.’ The younger Flynn, who has served as his father’s adviser, linked to the account of Jack Posobiec, whose Twitter account describes him as the special projects director of a group called Citizens4Trump. Posobiec said Welch’s actions were a ‘false flag,’ and claimed he was an actor carrying out an elaborate conspiracy to discredit sites that spread the fabricated #PizzaGate accusations. ‘Planted Comet Pizza Gunman will be used to push for censorship of independent news sources that are not corporate owned,’ he tweeted.” http://politi.co/2h9w4m0PAYBACK -- “Jane Timken launches bid to unseat Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges,” by the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Henry Gomez: “Jane Timken, an influential Canton Republican who helped raise money for President-elect Donald Trump, is angling to unseat Ohio GOP Chairman Matt Borges, whose lukewarm support of Trump’s winning campaign upset some party activists this year. Timken has been working the phones for several days, according to several Republican sources. She made her intentions clear in a letter sent Sunday to members of the GOP State Central Committee, a 66-member body that will determine Borges’ fate next month.“‘In fairness to Chairman Borges, this was a difficult year to be Chairman,’ Timken wrote. ‘In a Presidential election year, there are many competing obligations that must be balanced. I supported Governor [John] Kasich's two campaigns for Governor and his campaign for President. For many Ohioans, his loss was heartbreaking. Once the nomination was settled, Chairman Borges had the obligation to fully support the nominee and his campaign. He did not, and his actions have divided the state party leadership. This was his choice.’” http://bit.ly/2gaCv6B FIRST IN PLAYBOOK -- House Democratic Caucus Chair Xavier Becerra will meet with California Gov. Jerry Brown in Sacramento. It will be the first face-to-face meeting since Brown nominated Becerra to become California attorney general.-- IT’S WORTH NOTING: If confirmed, Becerra will be one of the most visible opponents to Trump. The top attorney in the nation’s biggest state will have quite the platform to go after the president.This photo was taken May 1, 2016. pic.twitter.com/r8yqja9uWf— Will Jordan (@williamjordann) December 4, 2016EURO UPDATE -- NYT A1, “Italy’s Premier, Matteo Renzi, Says He’ll Resign After Reform Rejected,” by Jason Horowitz in Rome: “Italy plunged into political and economic uncertainty early Monday as Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said he would resign after voters decisively rejected constitutional changes, a step certain to reverberate across a European Union already buffeted by anti-establishment anger … Mr. Renzi’s defeat, and the instability that his resignation is likely to cause, raised the prospect of punishment in the markets, but also a caretaker government staffed with technocrats appointed by the Italian president … If early elections do occur next year, 2017 is shaping up to be a seminal year in the history of the European Union with founding members Germany, France and potentially Italy all going to the polls with strong Euro-skeptic and populist candidates in the running. … Italy [has long been] mocked as the chaotic home of 63 governments in 70 years.” http://nyti.ms/2gRTqct KATIE COURIC went to Moscow to interview Edward Snowden. https://yhoo.it/2gaOfWY MICHAEL GRUNWALD on Politico, “The Victory of ‘No’: The GOP’s unprecedented anti-Obama obstructionism was a remarkable success. And then it handed the party to Donald Trump”: “One conservative Republican congressman who actually supported Trump’s candidacy told me his office was deluged with furious callers after he once dared to criticize Trump during the campaign. He called back one woman in her sixties who owned a vacation home in his district and had donated to his campaigns. He said the chat turned ugly in a hurry, until she said she had just three things to say to him. ‘First: Go f*** yourself. Second: I’m going to raise $75,000 to find a primary challenger to take you out. And third: Go f*** yourself.’“The congressman thought that would be the end of it, but the woman then went on Facebook and posted an account of their conversation, along with his cell phone number. For the next several weeks, Trump supporters called him at all hours to repeat his donor’s first and third recommendations.” http://politi.co/2h3iNrcBUSH MOVES ON -- “Jeb Bush to align with Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney law firm as strategic consultant,” by Florida Politics’ Peter Schorsch: “Jeb Bush is bringing his star power to the law firm of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney in a strategic affiliation through his firm Jeb Bush & Associates. The two-term Florida governor and former presidential candidate will be providing expertise as a consultant to the firm and its clients, according to a statement by the firm first shared with FloridaPolitics.com … In his new role, Bush — who will not be lobbying — will focus primarily on guidance for issues concerning Florida, the state he led as governor from 1999 to 2007.” http://bit.ly/2h9w4TaPIPELINE UPDATE -- NYT A1, “Army Blocks Drilling of Dakota Access Oil Pipeline,” by NYT’s Jack Healy and Nicholas Fandos in Cannon Ball, N.D.: “The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe won a major victory on Sunday in its battle to block an oil pipeline being built near its reservation when the Department of the Army announced that it would not allow the pipeline to be drilled under a dammed section of the Missouri River. The Army said it would look for alternative routes for the $3.7 billion Dakota Access pipeline. Construction of the route a half-mile from the Standing Rock Sioux reservation has become a global flash point for environmental and indigenous activism, drawing thousands of people out here to a sprawling prairie camp of tents, tepees and yurts … But it was unclear how durable the government’s decision would be. Sunday’s announcement came in the dwindling days of the Obama administration, which revealed in November that the Army Corps of Engineers was considering an alternative route … President-elect Donald J. Trump, however, has taken a different view of the project and said as recently as last week that he supported finishing the 1,170-mile pipeline, which crosses four states and is almost complete.” http://nyti.ms/2gXxyNk FROM POLITICO ILLINOIS -- Natasha Korecki: “J.B. Pritzker is calling political power players in Illinois to gauge support for a 2018 gubernatorial run as a Democrat -- and he’s telling them that he’d finance his own campaign, POLITICO has learned. The billionaire businessman and philanthropist is periodically approached about running for higher office but hasn’t shown this level of interest since his 1998 unsuccessful congressional run against U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., sources who have talked to Pritzker in recent weeks told POLITICO. ‘He’s deeply connected to the community and deeply concerned about what’s going on right now,’ a source who is close to Pritzker said of the state’s ongoing budget impasse. ‘What really motivates him is that little people are getting screwed.’“Some Democrats believe Pritzker, who has instant name recognition, a lengthy resume in philanthropy and an investment in Chicago’s business and tech world, is uniquely positioned to go up against multi-millionaire Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who in 2014 spent a record amount of money in an Illinois governor’s race -- more than $65 million. ‘J.B. is not intimidated by Rauner’s money,’ said a source close to Pritzker. ‘If he did this, he would do whatever it took to do it the right way. He would run to win and he would do what it takes to do that.’” MEDIAWATCH -- “How Donald Trump and ‘Morning Joe’ made up: While critics lash out, MSNBC's morning talker builds a pipeline to Trump Tower,” by Hadas Gold: “A saga that included cohost Joe Scarborough comparing Trump policies to Nazi-era Germany and the candidate tweeting that cohost Mika Brzezinski is ‘crazy and very dumb’ has taken a distinctly positive turn. The cohosts are now in regular communication with Trump and his circle — so much so that they are fielding criticism for being a house organ for the incoming administration. ‘They have always been boosters. Things turned south when trump froze them out but coverage always stilted. They are transition spokesmen now,’ tweeted rival morning anchor, CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Tuesday. (Cuomo declined to comment further.) … Scarborough, in an interview, declared that he and Brzezinski talk several times a week with Trump himself. And this week, Brzezinski traveled to New York and visited Ivanka Trump for coffee.” http://politi.co/2g1K9gm--"Tomi Lahren: Young, Vocal and the Right’s Rising Media Star," by NYT's Jonah Engel Bromwich: http://nyti.ms/2g9pzheTRUMP’S FAVOR FACTORY -- “Woody Johnson under consideration for ambassadorship,” by Page Six’s Ian Mohr and Emily Smith: “Jets owner Woody Johnson has emerged as a leading contender for a key ambassadorship under Donald Trump — sources exclusively tell Page Six — with other Trump backers lining up for prestigious diplomatic posts, including former MTA chief Peter Kalikow, Duke Buchan III, Georgette Mosbacher and Wilbur Ross Jr.’s wife, Hilary Geary Ross. Johnson is under consideration for ambassador to the UK, multiple sources say.” http://pge.sx/2fZ9pJ9WHO WORE WHAT AT THE MERCER PARTY -- “Trump Takes ‘Thank-You Tour’ to Wealthy Donor’s Costume Ball,” by Bloomberg’s Zach Mider and Jen Epstein: “Many of the guests were intellectuals, activists and politicians in the Mercers’ orbit, and their costumes ran the gamut from Tonya Harding, the disgraced figure skater, to Cruella de Vil. At least three women dressed as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal Supreme Court justice. ... Peter Thiel, the billionaire libertarian tech entrepreneur and founder of Clarium Capital, sported one of the evening’s most talked-about costumes. He dressed as the professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, whose real name is Terry Gene Bollea ... Earlier this year, Thiel, who nursed a grudge against Gawker Media, secretly financed Bollea’s successful invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against the company, and forced it into bankruptcy. ...“Nigel Farage ... came as the naval hero Admiral Lord Nelson ... Spotted boarding a hotel shuttle to the party was Scott Garrett, a New Jersey congressman who lost his seat after reports that he wouldn’t support a Republican Party committee because it backed gay candidates. Garrett and his wife, Mary Ellen, were dressed as gangsters from the 1930s. ... Brent Bozell, a longtime conservative activist whose Media Research Center has raised millions of dollars from the Mercers, came as Lionheart, the crusading British monarch, in a blood-red tunic.” http://bloom.bg/2gWzlT2 PLAYBOOK METRO SECTION – “How the Obamas Changed Washington,” by Elaina Plott on the cover of the December issue of Washingtonian: “DC in the last days of the Obamas is richer, younger, and whiter than before the First Family arrived. Plenty of people will tell you it’s cooler. But just as many will say the District has never felt more like two different cities at once. Both are true. ... When it comes to how we live, and how we play, the District has a new gloss. Yet we’re as steeped as ever in the same challenges as before, from mundane ones like improving federal hiring to tragic ones like racial inequality.” Cameos by Jack Quinn, Herbie Ziskend, Sally Quinn, Norm Eisen, Eric Lesser, Linda Douglass, Ben Rhodes, Josh Lipsky, Jake Levine, Vin Weber http://bit.ly/2gWZH9W IF YOU SEE ONE PLAY… Make it “Dear Evan Hansen.” The show started in D.C. in the summer of 2015 and moved to the Second Stage theater earlier this year for an off-Broadway run before landing on Broadway. The NYT review http://nyti.ms/2gXxyNp SPOTTED: Rev. Jesse Jackson on last night’s 7:25 p.m. Southwest MDW to DCA flight. “He was wearing a black fedora and posing for photos with passengers” ... Benny Johnson and Katelyn Rieley Johnson celebrating her birthday at the Inn at Little Washington.WELCOME TO THE WORLD -- Dave Rosenbaum of Rep. Dina Titus' (D-Nev.) office and Miri Cypers of Americans for Responsible Solutions welcomed a daughter, Daniella Rosenbaum, on Wednesday "at the George Washington University Hospital, just a few blocks from where they met more than a decade ago. Both mom and baby are doing great.”TRANSITIONS -- KAMRAN MUMTAZ, former spokesperson for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, is leaving Citigroup Inc. to join the National Football League as director of communications. At the NFL, Mumtaz will be responsible for helping develop media strategies related to marketing, consumer products, partnerships and events, including the NFL Draft and Pro Bowl. Mumtaz became popular among the City Hall press corps for his magic tricks (http://nydn.us/2gE821n). He will report to Natalie Ravitz, SVP of communications, who previously served as chief of staff to Rupert Murdoch and was a top aide to Bloomberg and Sen. Barbara Boxer. QUITE THE BIRTHDAY -- Pool report: “Trent Edwards celebrated his 40th birthday by marching in the Scottish Christmas Walk Parade in Alexandria on Saturday. In a surprise twist, Trent went from an audience member to celebrated participant when the Friends Of Trent Edwards (FOTE) social organization marched his way. FOTE pulled in Trent who was celebrated along the crowded parade route with cheers from the audience, rousing choruses of the happy birthday song, cheers of ‘40 more!’, and his friends counting up to 40 as the parade came to a close. Members of FOTE include Rebecca Mark (girlfriend and surprise planner guru), Andrew Christianson, Andrea McCarthy, David and Lizzy Peluso, Casey and Sarah Phillips, Diana Bergwin, Rhett Spivey, Sarah Hale, Tom Dunn, Emily Mueller, Ben Cassidy, Brian and Natasha Walsh, Tom Rust, David Smentek, Brandon Eden, Jackie Barber, Geoff Antell, Dan Conston, and Dave Kanevsky.” Video http://bit.ly/2gaE9W9 SPOTTED Sunday at the annual Story Partners holiday party hosted by Gloria Story Dittus at her home, which had a Santa for the kids attending: Kenny Day, Rebecca and Matt Haller, Michael and Mary Kathryn Steel, Juliet Eilperin, Lauren Pratapas, Gindy, Jared Parks, Margaret Carlson, Heather Podesta, Mark Elliott and Katie McBreen, Amy Walters and Matt Cooper.OUT AND ABOUT – Pool report: “Brendan and Lee Dunn hosted their annual ‘GOP Tax Nerds and Team McConnell’ Christmas party in Old Town Alexandria Saturday night, which one attendee called ‘a conservative safe-space’ during this post-election season. So if you left a message for a GOP staffer about the CR, you likely didn’t get a response because most were drinking Kentucky bourbon at the Dunn’s house. Per tradition, the Brendan and Lee had political cocktail napkins celebrating the year in politics that included, ‘Pray for Pajama Boy’ and ‘May Your Christmas be Bigly and Bright’ and a few others seen here along with Trump cookies. Pics http://bit.ly/2gWAB8H ... http://bit.ly/2h3Yl9z SPOTTED: McConnell crew including Sharon Soderstrom, Hazen Marshall, Don Stewart, Antonia Ferrier, John Abegg, Tom Hawkins, Scott Raab, Jane Lee, Neil Chatterjee, Stephanie Munchow along with McConnell Alums Josh Holmes, Kyle Simmons, Rohit Kumar, Malloy McDaniel, Denzel McGuire and Bradi White. From the “GOP Tax Nerds” crowd was Senate Finance Committee and Banking staff including Jay Kholsla, Tony Coughlan, Nick Wyatt, Kim Brandt, Chris Allen (in Santa suit), Greg Richard, Julia Lawless, Jen Kushowski and Jeff Wrase. Other Senate staff included Secretary of the Senate Laura Dove, Robert Duncan, Brendon Plack, Jonny Slemrod, Rick Murphy, Adam and Andrea Hechavarria, Glen Chambers, Andrew Siracuse, Wendy and Zak Baig, Brian Callahan, Emily and Michael Kirlin, John Chapuis and Ted Lehman. SPOTTED at last night’s Kennedy Center honors, which celebrated Mavis Staples, James Taylor, the Eagles, Al Pacino and Martha Argerich and was hosted by Stephen Colbert: Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, former Rep. Mike Rogers, Sen.-elect Tammy Duckworth, Sens. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Tom Udall (D-N.M.), Rep. Tom Price (HHS Sec nominee), Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), Rep. Darrell Issa (D-Calif.), Heather Podesta, Poppy McDonald, Lyndon BoozerTEL AVIV ON THE POTOMAC – Pool report: “The Saban Forum, the annual gathering of business, media and government leaders to discuss U.S.-Israeli relations and the Middle East concluded the days of meetings on Sunday afternoon at the Willard. The session started Friday with Israeli Defense Minister Lieberman and Egyptian Foreign Minister Shoukry. Prime Minister Netanyahu joined the session via satellite and Haim Saban closed the session by presenting John Kerry with a plaque for his commitment to peace. Kerry declined to comment on the Trump transition but did say that the State Department has not been consulted before Trump’s calls with foreign leaders. With regard to his own phone calls, he revealed that in his 4 years in office, he’s spoken with Netanyahu more than 350 times for about 150 hours — and those are just the ones that are public.” View sessions here: http://brook.gs/2gWa63c SPOTTED in the Willard this weekend: Andrea Mitchell, Sens. Lindsey Graham and Chris Coons, Jeffrey Goldberg, Jane Harman, Justice Stephen Breyer, Jake Tapper, George Tenet, Joe Lieberman, Leader Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, Paul Marciano and Melanne Verveer. Daniel Lubetzky brought KIND bars and everyone left with Tom Friedman’s new book. WEEKEND WEDDINGS -- “Dara Postar, Marshall Cohen” – Times: “Mrs. Cohen, 32, works in Washington as the chief of staff to Representative Norma J. Torres, a California Democrat. The bride graduated from Washington University in St. Louis and has a master’s in public policy from Georgetown. ... Mr. Cohen, 29, is the deputy political director in Washington for the Democratic Governors Association. He graduated from George Washington University, from which he also received a master’s in political management. ... The couple were introduced in 2013 by friends in Washington.” With pic http://nyti.ms/2h3g3u2 ...Wedding pic http://bit.ly/2g0WZeSSPOTTED: Rep.-Elect Jamie Raskin and Dep. Treasury Secretary Sarah Bloom Raskin, Adam Weiss, Mike Kandel, TJ Ducklo, Stephan Miller, Lucinda Guinn and Brian O'Donnell, Gabby Adler, Alex Zwerdling, Travis Lowe and Emily Parcell, Geoff and Jessica Mackler, Jason Bresler, Nicole Dorris, Jess Aune, Amy Strathdee, Gina and Josh Cherwin, Nicole Haber and Matt Stein, David Montes, Eve Lieberman and Ian Rayder, Sarah Cotton, Jordy Ziegler and Brian Lenzmeier, David and Becky Schatz, Spencer Lucker and Stephanie Bloom, Hilary Nachem and Josh Loewenstein, Becca Kaplan and Adam Levy.--“Kate Offerdahl, Brendan Guy”: “Mrs. Guy, 24, recently worked in Brooklyn as the assistant to the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton. The bride graduated from Columbia, from which she also received a master’s degree in international affairs. ... Mr. Guy, 28, is the manager of international policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York. He graduated from the University of British Columbia and received a master's in environmental management from Yale. ... The couple met in 2012 when he was assigned to be her student host during a weekend conference at Yale on United Nations global environmental policy.” With pic http://nyti.ms/2h3gfJM --“Emma King, Brett Doyle”: “Mrs. Doyle, 28, is a registered lobbyist in Washington for the Ford Motor Company. She graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown, from which she also received a master’s degree in finance. ... Mr. Doyle, 27, is a legislative assistant in Washington for Senator Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania. The groom graduated cum laude from Lafayette College. ... The couple met in January 2011 on their first day of work for Senator Toomey in Washington. At the time, she was a staff assistant and he was a legislative correspondent.” With pic http://nyti.ms/2gR9qvd BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: NYT media correspondent Mike Grynbaum, celebrating at a surprise spot for dinner with girlfriend Juli Weiner – read his Playbook Plus Q&A: http://politi.co/2gTdGul BIRTHWEEK (was yesterday): Dem media consultant Colin Rogero ... Rick Hohlt ... Marina McCarthy, who celebrated at newly renovated 1789 (h/t Jeff Solnet)BIRTHDAYS: Trump aide Eli Miller is 34 (hat tip: Jenna) ... Jamie Loftus Rhoades ... photographer Paul Morse, the pride of Seattle ... Stuart Brotman (h/t son Gabe of Politico Europe) ... Evan Burfield, co-founder of startup incubator 1776, is 4-0 (h/t Peter and the whole 1776 crew) ... Andrew Williams, VP of media relations at Goldman Sachs and an alum of GE, Treasury and the Fed … WaPo’s Rachel van Dongen, a Politico alum ... Roy Schwartz, co-founder and president of Axios and former chief revenue office at Politico, is 41 ... Moira Mack Muntz, the pride of Albany and an Obama ’08, W.H. and OMB alum, currently helping Revolution Messaging on a freelance basis ... Politico Europe’s Stephen Brown ... Jamie Estrada ... Politico’s Khorri Atkinson ... Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) is 6-0 ... NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown is 6-0 ... Lisa Spies ... WRC NBC4 anchor Chris Lawrence (h/t wife Marcela Salazar) ... Alex Simon, expansion at Oscar Insurance and a World Economic Forum “Global Shaper” ... Adam Casella, MBA candidate at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and an alum of GSO Capital Partners and Barclays Capital, who got married earlier this year (pic: http://bit.ly/2gWm7FP; NYT announcement: http://nyti.ms/2gE0qfm) ... Katie Owen, associate at McKinsey ... Gray Johnson, program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center (h/t Colby Bermel) ... Yana Mayayeva, a policy analyst for the Democratic staff of the Joint Economic Committee (h/t Thomas Nicholas) ... Jeremy Thompson, digital media specialist at Subject Matter and the pride of Annandale, Va. (h/t Sean Simons) ... Brai Odion-Esene ... Zoey Davidson ... … Simon Jerome, International Republican Institute boy wonder and the pride of NYU, is 25 ... Adam Rosenberg, group PR/digital manager at Clorox and a Burson-Marsteller and Edelman alum ... former Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA) is 7-0 … Politico alum Chad Krilow, now a bioinformatics engineer at Quest Diagnostics ... Bush DHS alum Caroline Dierker Poe ... Anne Trenolone, alum of Bush 43, DOD and RNC ... Porter McNeil, IL-IA political consultant and former Kerry-Edwards’ IL comms. director ... Zach Drennen, a LCV alum most recently on the national press advance staff at Hillary for America ... Susan Scott Neal – longtime writer for the Free Lance Star, although retired now ... Alex Traub of The Telegraph in India ... Nicole Drummond, deputy digital director at Strategic Partners & Media ... Angelo Turner ... Mike O’Toole ... Anthony Bedell, president of RedFive Strategies, is 49 ... Roderick McKelvie … Arthur Colby, MBA candidate at UChicago, a former captain in the U.S. Marine Corps and Brunswick Group alum … Kim Perkins ... Chuck Chvala (h/ts Teresa Vilmain) ... Arthur Lewis … Joan Didion is 82 … Calvin Trillin is 81 … the other Jim Messina (pop singer) is 69 … writer-director Morgan J. Freeman is 47 (h/ts AP)

Betsy DeVos, Trump's pick to head the Education Department, and her husband Dick at a 2015 game of the DeVos family-owned Orlando Magic. Betsy and her relatives have given at least $20.2 million to federal-level candidates and committees since 1989. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
by Jack Noland and Anna Massoglia
It's no secret that Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the Education Department, is a political fundraising juggernaut. Her contributions to candidates and school choice causes around the country have been all over the news since she was named the nominee.
More consequential, though, are the depth and breadth of contributions by her family -- by birth and by marriage -- going back decades. The donations have helped make the clan a pillar of the Republican Party, immensely influential in steering GOP politics and causes.
Since 1989, Betsy DeVos and her relatives have given at least $20.2 million to Republican candidates, party committees, PACs and super PACs, according to an OpenSecrets.org analysis. (A tabbed spreadsheet is here.) Amway, the multilevel marketing giant now known as Alticor that earned much of the family its wealth, gave another nearly $3.6 million to the party prior to 2002. And that's just at the federal level -- family members have given hundreds of millions more to state and local level politics and to nonprofit groups, think tanks and media outlets championing their favored conservative causes.
*At the federal level since 1989
In the 2016 cycle alone, the family had given at least $10 million as of late October to a host of GOP candidates and committees. Much of that -- $4.4 million -- went to super PACs: those supporting the White House bids of Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz as well as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and businesswoman Carly Fiorina, and the Koch brothers-backed Freedom Partners Action Fund and the super PAC started by Republican strategist Karl Rove, American Crossroads; the latter two groups helped support numerous Republicans in tight House and Senate races.
Betsy herself, along with her husband, Dick DeVos, Jr., has contributed more than $7.7 million to federal candidates, committees and parties since 1990, including almost $4.8 million to super PACs. DeVos and her husband ramped up their gifts significantly in the 2016 cycle, setting a new personal record of about $2.7 million. None of that, however, went to Trump or his supporting super PACs.
Not so for her brother, Erik Prince, co-founder of controversial private security contractor Blackwater (now known as Academi). He made two donations to Make America Number 1, a super PAC that backed Cruz and then Trump; Prince's $150,000 in gifts came after Trump had become the Republican party nominee. Since 1990, he and his ex-wives have given $519,546, including $175,309 in 2016.
Betsy DeVos voiced her thoughts about her family's abundant political giving in a 1997 piece in Roll Call, in which she wrote that she had decided "to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect some things in return. We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American values."
The definition of "traditional American values" is in the eye of the beholder, of course.
It was Dick Jr.'s father, 90-year-old Richard "Rich" DeVos, Sr., who first established the family as a force in conservative fundraising. The elder DeVos, who co-founded Amway, which his sons have helped lead in various capacities, and owns the NBA's Orlando Magic, has an estimated worth of $5.1 billion, according to Forbes. He's a past president of the Council for National Policy, a secretive network of conservative leaders of which he was an early funder.
*At the federal level since 1989
This cycle, he and his wife, Helen, also contributed their highest-ever cash totals, donating almost $2.9 million - the first election cycle they have crested $1 million since 1998. Overall, the elder DeVoses have given nearly $6.8 million in federal elections since 1990.
These are big numbers, relatively speaking. On the Center for Responsive Politics' list of top individual donors for 2016, Rich and Helen DeVos came in at No. 61 and Dick and Betsy DeVos at No. 65. Family members also made the list in previous election cycles - Dick and Betsy were 53rd in 2014 and the "Richard DeVos Family" ranked 54th in 2010.
More broadly, Amway's employees and PAC combined also rank highly among organizational donors: They placed 19th in 2004 and fourth in the nation in 1994.
A web of nonprofits
Savvy political players like the DeVoses don't engage only in direct electoral action. Through organized giving by its various foundations and strategic involvement in the institutions that receive their money, the DeVos family has leveraged extensive influence in nonprofit networks structured around their pet causes.
Most DeVos giving in this sphere is done through five foundations: the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation; the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation; the Daniel and Pamella DeVos Foundation; Cheri DeVos' CDV5 Foundation; and the Douglas and Maria DeVos Foundation. (Daniel, Cheri and Douglas DeVos are all siblings of Dick Jr., Betsy's husband.) According to one analysis of foundation tax records, the DeVos family donated more than $90 million in 2013 altogether and around $94 million in 2014 -- with nearly half going to groups involved in education.
The DeVos family's philanthropic efforts have a more social conservative bent than those of, say, the Koch brothers; for years the DeVoses have provided generous grants to religious-based organizations and -- in particular -- religious schools. Still, they have found common ground with the Kochs on a number of issues. Regular attendees at Koch network biannual donor meetings, the DeVoses have provided substantial support to the Koch-seeded charitable arm of their Americans for Prosperity, a very active dark money group; the FreedomWorks Foundation, which is connected to another dark money outfit that originated with one started by the Kochs; and the Mercatus Institute, a "market-focused" research center at George Mason University that has received funding from the Kochs since the 1980s.
And the family has actively fought to sweep away restrictions on money in politics with substantial contributions to nonprofits that litigate against such limits. Those include the Center for Competitive Politics and the James Madison Center for Free Speech, a nonprofit set up by Citizens United attorney James Bopp and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that consistently funnels nearly the entirety of its funds to Bopp's firm each year. Bopp has taken a broadsword to campaign finance restrictions nationwide, mounting legal challenges to them at the federal, state and local levels.
Betsy DeVos may have married into the DeVos dynasty, but her own family has its own strong ties to the conservative movement. Her father, Edgar Prince, helped Gary Bauer create the Family Research Council, an influential conservative group. And along with her siblings, Betsy sits on the board of the Edgar & Elsa Prince Foundation, a major donor to groups that include the Education Freedom Fund, the Heritage Foundation and the Alliance Defense Fund.
Trump's choice to run the Education Department holds strategic advisory positions with a number of nonprofit organizations that lobby to varying degrees on education issues, including Jeb Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education. But her baby is the American Federation for Children a 501(c)(4) "dark money" group that promotes school voucher programs and charter schools across the country. AFC has significantly increased its efforts in recent years: It told the IRS that it made just $250,000 in political expenditures in 2009, a figure that increased to over $1 million by 2010 and nearly $1.7 million by 2011. In 2014, the number dropped a bit to just over $1 million.
But that year, AFC and its affiliated organizations boasted spending $4.5 million between the primary and general elections on 242 races in nine states -- without ever disclosing its donors. It reported that pro-school choice candidates -- mainly governors, state legislators and other non-federal politicians -- won in 92 percent of the general election races it targeted, distinguishing AFC, with Betsy DeVos as its chair, as a powerhouse in the movement.
And AFC's efforts go far beyond direct involvement in political contests. Among other activities, it has funneled money into other "dark money" groups that support contenders for state supreme court seats deemed likely to be friendly to policies advocated by AFC that could be legally challenged.
The Education nominee also heads All Children Matter, a political committee that lobbies for school choice. Started with seed money from DeVos' Advocates for School Choice, the predecessor to AFC, All Children Matter has been funded by millions from the DeVos family over the years, but has also received substantial sums from the Walton family (of Walmart fame) and other high profile conservative donors. Though DeVos was not personally named in the case, All Children Matter has millions in outstanding fines for election law violations dating back to 2008 -- a record amount that is nearly a decade past due. Betsy DeVos led the group at the time of the violations -- in fact, she is the only person who has been listed on All Children Matter's leadership page since 2006.
Supporting the bench
Megadonors tend not to focus their contributions only on those in the majors; they direct some of their investments to minor leaguers, too, as well as those who might have a more direct local impact on their concerns. The Grand Rapids, Mich.- based DeVoses are no exception, giving extensively in state and local elections. They've contributed, for instance, a combined $9.5 million to the Michigan Republican Party in the last 20 years.
According to National Institute on Money in State Politics data, Betsy DeVos has given over $1.9 million in state and local elections since 1996, a total that pales in comparison to her husband Dick's $40.2 million. To be fair, the lion's share of that sum was the nearly $35.4 million that he gave to his own 2006 gubernatorial campaign.
In that contest, DeVos family members (including the candidate) accounted for three of his top four donors. But DeVos, who was challenging Democratic incumbent Jennifer Granholm, fell short in the general election by a 56-to-42 percent margin.
Overall, Dick DeVos's siblings have cut large checks at the state and local levels. Doug DeVos, the current president of Amway, has donated almost $2.8 million in these elections with his wife, Maria, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Dan, a sports executive and the current chairman of the Orlando Magic, has contributed a little less than $2.4 million with his wife, Pamella. Their sister, Cheri DeVos, a former Amway vice president, has given more than $1.25 million at the state and local level.
State-level advocacy organizations have also drawn significant DeVos largesse. For example, eight DeVos family members together gave an even $2 million to Protecting Michigan Taxpayers, a group that sought (unsuccessfully) in 2015 to repeal Michigan's prevailing wage law, which ensures state construction contractors pay union wages to their workers.
But if the family has adopted a second state, it's Florida. DeVos ownership of the Magic dates back to 1991, and family members have donated to a number of Florida politicians and advocacy organizations. In 2008, when the group Florida4Marriage sponsored an amendment to the state constitution that would limit the definition of marriage to a heterosexual union, Dick DeVos contributed $100,000, making him the second-highest donor to the effort. The measure passed -- but it was later struck down by the Supreme Court's 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.
Researchers Doug Weber and Alex Baumgart contributed to this post, as did Ashley Balcerzak, our money-in-politics reporter, and Brendan Quinn, our outreach and social media coordinator. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

For almost 16 years, across two administrations of different parties, America's teachers have watched federal education officials embrace destructive policies. President George W. Bush ushered in the era of test and punishment based accountability under the No Child Left Behind Act. President Barack Obama entered office with promises of relief from unrealistic expectations and punitive incentives - only to double down on testing's importance by favoring value-added teacher evaluations and to promote privatization through the charter school sector which has increasingly placed portions of our educational commons into hands avoiding public oversight. With a Secretary of Education under President Obama who declared that Hurricane Katrina was the "best thing" to happen to New Orleans schools because the recovery turned the entire city over to privately managed charters, teachers could be forgiven for wondering how anything could get worse regardless of who won the election this month.
It's worse.
After floating a raft of names - from former rival and now designated Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson to New York City charter magnate Eva Moskowitz to former Washington D.C. School Chancellor and Patron Saint of Firing Teachers Michelle Rhee to actually qualified school choice advocate and Hoover Institute Fellow Dr. Williamson Evers - Donald Trump has settled upon Michigan billionaire and school privatization zealot Betsy DeVos as his nominee for Secretary of Education. Friends have asked me directly what I think about this pick, and I have frankly responded that if Ms. DeVos can accomplish for the nation's schools what she has managed to do in Michigan by leveraging her fortune to buy her desired results, then we are well and truly screwed. Ms. DeVos has never attended a public school, never sent her children to a public school, never studied education at any level, never taught a day in her life. What she does bring to the post is an unparalleled zeal for turning as much of our public schools as possible over to unregulated hands and for sending as much public school money as possible to private and religious institutions. With her appointment, the Trump administration's priorities for our nation's schools are made crystal clear: to hell with quality, to hell with equity, to hell with everything except privatization.
As early as 2011, Betsy DeVos was well recognized as an influential if stealthy advocate for school choice, especially in the form of vouchers. Such efforts are always couched in terms that emphasize empowering parents and using competition to make all schools better, but the agenda has little to do with excellent education for all and much more to do with taking the nation's $600 billion school budget and getting it into private hands. Having failed in 2000 to convince Michigan voters to institute vouchers, DeVos altered strategy and backed legislators and bills that favored vouchers and privatization in various states. Forming All Children Matter in 2003, DeVos quickly spent $7.6 million in the first year to get electoral results in favor of privatization. If you've ever heard a conservative politician use the term "government schools" instead of "public schools," you have Betsy DeVos and her husband (and Amway fortune heir) Dick to thank for it. It turns out that slapping the label "government" on any publicly funded good is an effective way to bend public opinion against it.
The DeVos family was also deeply involved in repackaging vouchers from their original racist origin as a way to get white children out of desegregation and into an "only hope"for urban children "trapped" in "failing schools." The problem with that strategy is that with years of evidence in from voucher programs like Milwaukee there simply isn't evidence that vouchers do very much for their alleged beneficiaries - although they do manage to get public money into private hands fairly well. In fact, in Milwaukee, students receiving vouchers performed worse than their counterparts in the city's public schools. The DeVos affinity for vouchers is not limited to secular institutions, and, they have deep and lasting ties to conservative Christian activists who see secular public education as an out and out enemy that has to be ended. Betsy DeVos has served on the board of the Acton Institute which has featured events by Christian Dominionist Gary North who is on record writing, without irony: "So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God." (emphasis added)
The DeVos record in her home base of Michigan should be on great concern to those who see public education as a public good that should not be turned over to profiteers. Her efforts in Michigan and nationally aim to influence policies steering as much money as is possible away from fully public schools and into "competition" in the form of charters. The Michigan experiment has been especially woeful for public education as the state's charter sector is stupendously unregulated and an eye-watering 80% of charter schools are run by for-profit management corporations that don't even try to hide that they are self-dealing. The Detroit Free Press reported in August that the state is sending $1 billion in tax payers' money to charter schools but cannot be bothered to hold them accountable for much of anything:
Wasteful spending and double-dipping. Board members, school founders and employees steering lucrative deals to themselves or insiders. Schools allowed to operate for years despite poor academic records. No state standards for who operates charter schools or how to oversee them.
And a record number of charter schools run by for-profit companies that rake in taxpayer money and refuse to detail how they spend it, saying they're private and not subject to disclosure laws. Michigan leads the nation in schools run by for-profits.
According to The New York Times, a 2010 law backed by a DeVos-funded group pushed to expand charters, but DeVos' group also blocked provisions that would have prevented failing charters from expanding and replicating. Since that law passed, the number of charters in Michigan that are among the state's lowest-performing schools has doubled. Another story in the Times illustrates the chaos this has unleashed upon students and families in Detroit in the name of "empowering" them with choice. Decades into the charter school experiment and more than a decade into the DeVos influenced school landscape, Detroit has 30,000 more school seats than it needs and schools go into heated competition to fill those seats in time to get state money determined by headcount. Charter school seats are concentrated near downtown while more impoverished neighborhoods with more school-aged children have fewer schools - requiring those seeking choice to travel significant distances in a city of 140 square miles. Many charter operators get around the requirements to have open lotteries by layering the application process with burdensome paperwork, unusual enrollment periods, or by advertising in sources they know the city's most impoverished families do not read. The result is that a great many families seeking charter seats end up at poorly run schools in Michigan's unregulated environment and end up switching schools multiple times in the elementary years -- an environment that Tonya Allen, President of the Skillman Foundation, compared to "The Hunger Games" for schools.
Perhaps so much disruption would be deemed worthwhile if Michigan had anything of merit to show for it. Unfortunately, such merit is hard to see even after so many years of DeVos favored school choice policies. Consider Michigan's 8th grade results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in both mathematics and reading. In math, Michigan's students in 2015 showed no improvement at all over students from 2000, and while the gap between White and Black students did narrow from 45 points in 2000 to 35 points in 2015, the gap between students in poverty and student not in poverty was essentially unchanged in the same period. Meanwhile, 8th grade reading scores were even worse - with 8th graders in 2015 also performing no better overall than in 2000, but with the gap between Black and White students remaining unchanged in that time and the gap between students in poverty and students not in poverty growing from 13 points to 23 points. The lack of quality control and oversight in Detroit is so bad that even national philanthropists eager to promote school choice and charters routinely pass over the Motor City.
Policies and politicians favored by Betsy DeVos and backed by her considerable resources have unleashed chaos in Michigan schools, leading to a charter school environment that even some charter school boosters find difficult to justify. And the result of her efforts since the early 2000s is a school system that isn't actually performing any better than before she managed to leverage her fortune in favor of unregulated choice and charter school proliferation. No wonder then that, although she has her fans among pro-privatizing politicians like former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, she is also regarded as highly dangerous from others in her home state. The President of Michigan's state board of education said, "It's like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, and hand-feeding it schoolchildren....Devos' agenda is to break the public education system, not educate kids, and replace it with a for-profit model." A Democratic state senator from Deerborn Heights added, "The fact that she now is going to have a platform to do that on a national level should be of great concern to everyone in this country."
If confirmed as Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos will almost certainly be in charge of whatever emerges from Donald Trump's promise to allocate $20 billion to expand school choice in the form of charter schools and voucher plans. In his announcement of the plan, Trump even used DeVos favored code language by referencing students trapped in "failing government schools," and he thanked Ron Packard, the CEO of the for-profit charter company that runs the failing charter school that served as the backdrop for his speech. It is almost impossible to imagine optics that better sum up Betsy DeVos' record on education: coded language used to demean our educational commons, a for-profit charter management company, and a school that is failing to improve students' measured performance. In fact, the only person in the story likely to be doing very well is Mr. Packard himself who used to pull in a salary of $5 million to run the K12 Inc. family of for-profit virtual charter schools (with an educational record so dubious that the NCAA refuses to accept credits from the schools) and whose Pansophic Learning is now the largest for-profit operator of charter schools in Ohio. Secretary-designate DeVos must love it.
Cynics - and even some optimists - might doubt just how much damage a DeVos-led Department of Education could inflict. After all, the nation spends over $600 billion annually on public education, but only 9% of that is federally funded which is why Trump's voucher and choice proposal assumes, very optimistically, that states will kick in over $100 billion additionally over the $20 billion from the federal government. The problem with this view is that while the federal government does not foot a lot of education money, it can unleash a hell of a lot of chaos with the money it does spend via incentives and regulation. For example, Title 1 funds, intended for schools serving high percentages of economically disadvantaged students, reached 56,000 schools serving 21 million students in 2009-2010. Luke Messer, a Republican Congressman from Indiana who is a friend of Mike Pence and who founded the Congressional School Choice Caucus already suggested that some or all of the money for Trump's school choice program could come from the $15 billion the federal government spends on Title I. Grabbing money intended to help public schools that serve the nation's most needy children and turning it into an uncontrolled experiment in vouchers and unregulated charter schools is exactly the kind of project Betsy DeVos would relish. And even if she only got her hands on a fraction of that sum, nobody should forget the degree of chaos Arne Duncan managed with only $4 billion in Race to the Top funds at his disposal.
In the end, Ms. DeVos may be frustrated less by available funds and a willing Congress than by her own preference for pulling strings outside the limelight. As far back as 1997, she openly admitted that she donated money to Republican politicians in full expectation of getting a return on her investment: "I have decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect something in return. We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American virtues. We expect a return on our investment." But it is a lot easier to buy the fealty of selected politicians and to hand them legislation to pass into law and to do so from the wings than the try to lead a national effort to convince Americans to gut their public schools. Despite 30 years of a relentless school failure narrative, Americans tend to rate their local school systems fairly highly, and parents with at least one child in school rate them higher still. If Betsy DeVos is going to leverage the promised money for school choice into substantial change, she will have to do something she has never really done - step into the sunlight and talk to us regular folks about why we should gamble our children on her ideas that have such a remarkably poor record.
I doubt that she has the skill set to spread her ideas to America's suburban schools, but if Congress actually does give her a free hand with Title I, she will have the power to deal great harm to America's poorest children. As Secretary of Privatization, she can turn many more of our urban schools into profit centers that enrich private interests far more efficiently than they care about the children within them. Expect more people like Ron Packard to cash in while our nation's children and teachers suffer. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton received far more than President-elect Donald Trump from Americans living abroad. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill famously claimed that "all politics is local." True, but it's increasingly global as well -- especially for the roughly 5.7 million U.S. citizens living outside the nation's borders. Whatever the reason for their travels, Americans abroad can and do participate in politics and give to campaigns.
The Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) estimates that 2.6 million of the American citizens living overseas are eligible to vote. In 2014, only 93,000 of those, or 4 percent, voted. 2016 numbers aren't yet available. (This estimate does not include military members or their families, a small number of whom made campaign contributions included in the figures below.)
While we can't know how they voted, we do know this: Overseas citizens made almost $4.6 million in donations to federal candidates, party committees and outside spending groups like super PACs in 2016, putting them as a group more or less on par with a small state such as Alaska.
The top home-away-from-home for donors living overseas is easily London, which accounted for $1.3 million in donations in 2016. Including the rest of the United Kingdom brings that figure over $1.6 million, by far the largest total from any one country even though more than twice as many Americans live in Canada as the U.K. Despite London's importance to the right-leaning financial sector, 77.7% of partisan donations from the city went to Democrats. Coincidentally, that's not far from the ratio of Democratic to Republican attendees (308 to 111) at a bipartisan London campaign event described by CBS in October. London is also home to the cycle's largest overseas donors, Peter L. and Maria Kellner, a retired couple that apparently splits time between Massachusetts and England while giving generously to Democrats.
The next four cities on the list are the Asian metropolises of Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, and Tokyo, all of which, except Shanghai, rank among the 10 foreign cities with the largest voting-age American populations, according to FVAP. Toronto, in seventh place, is the top Canadian city on the list; Dubai, in 19th, is the biggest donor location outside of Canada, Europe and East Asia. The two cities with the largest populations of overseas Americans, Vancouver and Tel Aviv, accounted for just $9,418 and $5,712 in donations respectively.
(Note: Our analysis is of contributors of more than $200; no donor detail, including address, is provided for smaller contributors.)
London ex-pats are typical in leaning Democratic. Americans abroad gave more than $2.6 million to Democratic causes in 2016 and nearly $1.4 million to their GOP counterparts. That ratio -- 65.7 percent of partisan contributions going to Democrats -- would make overseas donors the 12th most Democratic state, just ahead of New Mexico and New York. That's an increase in left-leaning partisanship: In 2012, 58.2 percent of those contributions went to Dems.
Another interesting note about 2012: Donors living abroad gave far more in that election cycle -- $7.3 million, or about 160 percent more than they gave this time around. London accounted for more than $2.2 million. The donors were somewhat more evenhanded in 2012, as well, though Democrats still got the lion's share -- 58.2 percent -- of the money.
The cities that are the biggest exceptions to the pro-Democratic tilt are all in Asia: Hong Kong (71.5 percent to Republicans), Singapore (65.6 percent), and Shanghai (92.9 percent). Hong Kong and Shanghai's numbers are heavily skewed by two major donors to the super PAC Right to Rise, which backed Jeb Bush's presidential candidacy. (OpenSecrets Blog reported on Right to Rise's overseas support last year.)
The leftward lean of overseas American donors might have to do with the fact that, according to FVAP, 46 percent have a graduate or professional degree. The Census Bureau tells us that only 12 percent of all Americans over age 25 have an advanced degree; this group shifted well to the left in 2016, supporting Hillary Clinton by a 21 percentage point margin after giving Barack Obama a 13-point victory in 2012. Alternately, perhaps liberals are more likely to enjoy life abroad, or work in industries that require lots of travel. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Much of America is anguished over the presidential election results. It's understandable. Our 45th president will be a spoiled, sexual predator with limited knowledge, meager attention span, and no government experience whatsoever; a man with a shady business record who ran on a platform nearly devoid of details but heavy on disdain for any one who wasn't a straight white conservative man not named Jeb Bush.
Those who are terrified by this situation seem to also believe that Trump rode a wave of hate to the White House. Their sense, it seems, is that hate trumped love. And many are wrestling with the awful realization that we are a country most defined by contempt for minorities and women and non-Christians and the LGBTQ community and other sections of society typically deprived of voice. But closer consideration of the election results and the electorate itself reveals that the deciding factor was not actually hate but something far less benign on paper but often more dangerous in reality. It was apathy that brought us President-elect Donald Trump.
It's unfair and reductive (not to mention depressing) to assume that all or even the majority or even a significant portion of those who voted for Donald Trump embrace his most heinous opinions and inexcusable actions. Some of them do, sure, but this faction of his support alone could not come close to getting the man elected (look how poorly David Duke did in his senate bid in deep red Louisiana). What we can assume is that Trump voters as a whole did not care enough that he spoke and behaved in such a manner. They didn't deem him morally unqualified to receive their vote because morality wasn't their priority. The priority was their own self interest. And this, in reality, is why most people vote. We like to talk about national honor and the greater good and informed citizens choosing the most qualified candidate, but -- at the end of election day -- people vote for the person they feel will do best by them. And enough people generally felt (not without reservations, I'm sure) that a new face in Washington might just be the remedy to our stagnant government. Maybe a different kind of politician, one not so rooted in same-old same-old, could shake things up and get shit done. Plenty of them just vote Republican no matter what (even if the "what" in this case was one Donald J. Trump). And most, if not all, of them were not sufficiently fearful of a Trump presidency because they weren't the ones he directly threatened. It's a sad reality about human nature -- to put ourselves before others -- but the type of moral indifference displayed by many Trump voters pales in comparison to the apathy that plagued large numbers of Democratic constituents.
The New York Times reported that the majority of protesters at post-election rallies in Manhattan were actually Bernie Sanders supporters who either voted 3rd party or didn't vote at all. They cared enough to take to the streets after the election but couldn't be bothered to vote for a candidate who could win or vote at all on election day. The hypocrisy is as staggering as the arrogance, but it wasn't just Bernie supporters who didn't vote. Numbers were down significantly among traditional Democratic constituencies, including young voters in general, African Americans, college-educated whites, Asian Americans and other minority groups. Most surprisingly, there was no Latino surge as expected. Democratic turnout was significantly down across the board.
Don't blame Hillary Clinton for not inspiring voters. She is who she is, and she made her qualifications for the job evident to anyone who cares about competency and equality and all those other things most people in a democracy hold dear. But democracy requires participation. Not voting is voting for the winner. And those who didn't vote -- along with those who voted for Trump -- decided this year's winner. Apathy was the secret weapon, not some vast, previously-hidden underbelly of hatred.
Do not anguish America. The Trump presidency will be difficult, but redemption awaits if those who oppose him only vote.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Gun deaths have risen sharply since the passage of Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” gun law, a new study found.
The report, published this month in JAMA Internal Medicine, analyzed data from 1999 to 2014 and discovered that homicides in Florida have increased 24.4 percent, while gun-related homicides are up 31.6 percent since the law was enacted in 2005 under then-Gov. Jeb Bush.
The law protects people who use deadly force when citing self-defense ― even if escape is an option. The same law shielded George Zimmerman from jail time after he shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager.
The National Rifle Association pushed for and helped draft the legislation. Following its passage, then-Miami Police Chief John Timoney called the law a “license to murder” and warned it could drive an increase of lethal force “where it shouldn’t be used.”
Florida was the first of more than 20 states to expand similar self-defense legislation. While some experts are skeptical of the link between these laws and increased killings, “a 2013 academic study that compared 20 ‘stand your ground’ states with states where the duty to retreat still exists found an 8 percent increase in homicide associated with the laws,” according to The Wall Street Journal. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

THIS IS INTERESTING: Jeb Bush Supports Article V Convention. I should note that the Tennessee Law Review published a special symposium issue on constitutional conventions a few years ago. I wrote the Foreword, Sandy Levinson wrote the Afterword, and an all-star cast including Randy Barnett, Brannon Denning, Richard Epstein, Tim Lynch, Rob Natelson, and too […]